sarah in nyc

This morning my buddy, Eve, stopped by. We met about twenty five years ago when I was working at Ansche Chesed.  Eve was pregnant with her oldest when we met. She was one of the more experience moms who guided me through early motherhood. Eve's second child is just a few weeks younger than my oldest.  In order for Eve to make room for her second child, we bought her couch. It's still in my living room, but I recovered it a few years ago.We spent a fair amount of  hanging out together when our kids were teeny. Eve possessed many talents, including sewing which I envied. I had no idea how to sew when we first met. Eve moved out of the city. For the past many years, the two of us will spend the morning together. We talk about family,about Jewish stuff, the workings of community and we talk sewing. Often I will help Eve think out a sewing problem. Today we did a bit of actual sewing. Eve had a dress that was like the grades my 8th grade Hebrew teacher used to give me, K...

 One of the nice things about old friends, is that they are happy to step into the mom role for you. Our friends Mitch and Susie have invited our oldest for Rosh HaShanah. Susie told my oldest, that she is looking forward to having her because her own kids will be away. I know that my daughter will be treated like a beloved family member in their cozy home. Susie was one of the first people I knew who quilted. Susie was one of my mentors in my early days of sewing. She loves textiles and rich colors. Susies love of textiles means that when you sleep at her house the sheets are really beautiful and really cozy.  Aside from Mitch, Susie loves the Grateful Dead. So there is lots of tie dye in Mitch and Susie's home. In thinking about a good house gift, I thought of a set of hand dyed napkins. What you see above is the fabric, a white eyelet with black embroidery that has been painted. I then added both salt and raw rice to absorb the dye and create pattern. ...

The cushion for my Craigslist chair was outfitted with a quick and dirty temporary cover, made out of a tube of silk rubber-banded into a rosette. I finally got to finishing off the cushion. First I stab stitched around the piping on both sides. That gave a bit more definition to the pillow. I cut the center down hemmed it and gathered it tight with straight stitches. i was then left with a hole at the center of my cushion. When my daughter went to China for the first time she brought back fabric for me. She bought me a meter of medallion brocade. The brocade medallions are traditionally used as appliques. I cut out a medallion, serged the edges, using the edge of the medallion as my stitching guide. The serger's presser foot was up against the edge of the design. ( I like to do things the easy way.) Then I turned the serged edge and top-stitched it. It was easy work to hand stitch the medallion in the center of the cushion. There it is, done, and fairly simple to do as well....

Sometimes you just want to get that chicken cooked quickly and with a whole lot of flavor. I am a big fan of spice rubs. Often I will make them up on my own. There are , however some really good ones out on the market. They are perfect for when you are both pressed for time, and don't especially want to think. Our local Internet grocer, Fresh Direct caters to the needs of food -chic obsessed New Yorkers. They produce a terrific line of spice mixes. I used this one on tonight's chicken. I poured a whole bunch of the spice mix into a bowl and then massaged each chicken piece with the mix. Yes, rubbing it in does make a difference. I suppose those repulsed by touching raw chicken, could put the chicken and the spices into a plastic bag and do the massage bit  through the plastic. My son thought that a shot of lemon juice would make the chicken even better. So half way through the cooking, he added some lemon juice to the chicken. This chicken falls into one of my favorit...

Like many of my pieces, the interplay of dark and glimmer can make them difficult to photograph. I decided in this image to photograph the piece showing the border a bit better. I bordered the piece with what by now feels like a trusty friend, bronze metallic middy braid. I had gotten a massive industrial sized roll several years ago at Tinsel Trading. I use the braid as an edging so often, because it's easy to use and looks terrific. You can't ask for too much more from a sewing notion . I had made a foolish attempt to add a layer of fake fur, as a batting of sorts, to give the piece a bit more heft. In case you would have a similar idea. Let me tell you, don't. The nap of the fake fur dragged the three layers all over creation. Undoing a four thread serged edge is not my idea of a good time. So now you know, fake fur makes a bad batting when paired with a rayon and a fake suede. You were probably smart enough to figure that out on your own, and didn't need me to ...

I know that some  scorn what they think of as "Culinary Judaism", people whose entire observance of Judaism is food related. I see the food as part of the entire package.The same way that the musical modes of the High Holiday season , or the sound of the shofar get me thinking about mending my ways, the foods of the season really can't be separated from the experience of the holidays. Traditionally, Tzimmis is made for Sukkot, the fall harvest festival.  But in one of those slightly skewed ways that my family follows tradition ( We are probably one of the only families where blue dishtowels are for meat dishes and red towels for meat- perhaps my grandmother was color blind or simply ornery in her own way), we have always eaten Tzimmis for Rosh Ha Shanah. Given how early in September Rosh Ha Shanah is this year, there is a bit of madness to eating a heavy beef stew, when it very well might be hot out. I am however, a loyalist to Tzimmis on Rosh HaShanah. The summer of ...

to Cousin Jimmy's gift. The borders are made out of a lovely quality, satin backed faux suede. I painted on the leaves and the vine. It works well with the center. I had added some additional embellishments with a brush and also with a few well placed irridescent seed beads. It all needs a day to dry before I can sew it together.

My cousin Jimmy turned 60 this spring. I had wanted to give him a gift, and hadn't quite figured out the right thing. Jimmy grew up in the South and is one of those Southern men who makes everyone around him feel instantly comfortable. It's a lovely trait. Jimmy grew up attending a Reform synagogue. As an adult, he and his family attend a Reform synagogue. But when Jimmy's father died, Jimmy attended services each morning at a local Chabad synagogue. The custom at Chabad services is that mourners not only say Kaddish , they lead the rest of the congregation in the saying of the Kaddish. Mostly, that was not a problem for Jimmy. But one of the Kaddishs recited at the morning service is not the regular kaddish, it is Kad dish d'Rabanan , the Kaddish recited in honor of the rabbis and the scholars. This is not a prayer usually recited in a Reform synagogue. The Kaddish is not in Hebrew, but rather in Aramaic. Kaddish d'Rabbanan has one paragraph, that if you a...

My son's best friend lives downstairs from us. For a few years the two of them worked on this rubber band ball on and off with various bursts of energy. The rubber band ball has lived downstairs for most of it's existance. It just came upstairs to live with us as a result of a major clearing out of their apartment. I have fond feelings for the rubber band ball. It represents a period of  deep intensity of friendship that can be a real gift during childhood. It also reminds me of the crazy hare-brained schemes that only ten year old children can throw themselves into with such passion. It reminds me not only of my son and his best friend's plans to make it into the Guiness Book of Records but similar plans I had with my own friends at a similar age. I'm also very much a mom with the sense of "What am I supposed to do with this space waster???" What do you think I should do with the rubber band ball? It does bounce, but it is heavy enough to cause severe...

I love old fabrics and often incorporate old textiles into my work. Given that I make tallitot , lots of old tallitot pass through my hands. At some point, as you keep looking at the same category of objects, you begin to develop a bit of understanding, an ability to sort the objects by quality and into historical time periods. Last night Sara and her mom Rebecca came by. They had an old family tallit that Sara would be wearing at her bat mitzvah. They assumed that they would need to add new tzitzit . Rebecca had already gotten new decorative fringe added to the tallit . I had expected to see a standard issue American tallit in silk or in rayon. instead, when I opened the tallit I was greeted with something I had never seen before. The lettering on the atara /neckband was a wonderful Hebrew font that was in use from about the 1890's-the early 1920's. Then i saw that the text was not the usual text one finds on an atara. Often, the rayon ribbon used on a commercial...

Like many bloggers, I love when readers post comments. It's always nice to know that I'm not just writing into a huge void but that there are actual human being taking in what I say and writing back. Like lots of bloggers, I have chosen to moderate the comments before publishing, mostly to make sure that crackpots aren't writing weird and unpleasant things that will makes everyone's experience less pleasant. During the time that I have been writing this blog, several times the comments, were not real comments from actual people, but were simply links to Internet stores, most often, ones selling factory made Judaica. I found these sneak links to be deeply irritating for several reasons. It seemed to me that these stealth links were  a not very honest way, to steer business to a commercial site, to which I had zero connection. As someone who hand makes Judaica, it seemed like a not very nice way to try to siphon away business. Usually, when such a comment shows up,...

My daughter returns to college next Sunday. She is going into her senior year, and will be living in a single.  She had asked if we could purchase a chair for her room. I reminded her of Aunt Yettie's lovely mid century modern rope and wood folding chair which had been living in our storage locker. My husband brought the chair home. My daughter was delighted  with the chair.The chair needed pillows. I bought a pillow form and I covered it in African mud cloth. I covered the small bolster with  silk burlap and covered the ends with mud cloth. My daughter is happy. So am I.

For the first time in a while, I made all of Shabbat dinner. Actually, let me correct that. My older son made the mirepoix that is in the meat balls. He made so much that I have a Zip-Lok in the freezer with  the left overs ready to make something else taste extra yummy. Costco has been selling kosher ground turkey at really great prices.  I don't particularly like the taste of ground turkey. It also has a horrible slimy texture when raw. A mirepoix, a paste of cooked onions mushrooms and celery cooked with a bit of salt, pepper and white wine, gives the not very meaty turkey a much meatier taste. This time though, I used actual beef rather than ground turkey. I know that eating poultry is better for you than eating red meat, but ground beef is just tastier. I figure that the mirepoix can just make a good thing, the yummy beef, better. It felt good to be kneading the challa dough after a month of not doing it. My son did a really wonderful job w...

In several weeks, our older son will be returning to Israel to volunteer for an 18 month stint serving in the Israeli Army. As one might expect, this decision on his part, fills me with all sorts of mixed emotions.  I am, on the one hand, deeply proud that he would make such a grown up decision, and equally proud of the really adult way that he want about figuring out how to go about doing it. On the other hand, my heart is now filled with worry both for his safety and for the safety of the land of Israel. A few months back, there was a sing along of old time Israeli songs at my synagogue. Those old time songs of hope and hope for peace just had me sobbing, thinking of my boy joining the many others who fought for the safety of Israel. Earlier in the summer, I realized that I needed to put some of these emotions to work. I thought that while my son was doing his army time, I would make a Torah mantle in his honor, as a sort of amulet to keep him safe. A bit of magica...

Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of posting about pieces while they are in progress. While I have a pretty good idea about where I am going with a piece and where I want to end up, often my client is going on blind trust. Sometimes, I feel like showing a piece to client while I'm in the early stages, is a bit like getting off the road at a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike and asking, " Isn't New York amazing??? '. Well, Ella's tallit is still along some rest stop. The frustrating thing about working on this tallit is that I have to let each section dry before I add any more to it. I love painting on silk. It's crazy fun to work wet, that is wetting the silk before I begin to paint. When you work wet, the colors bleed into one another in a really lovely way. Ella's tallit needs me to work dry. So I drape a garbage bag over my table, paint a little, wait for what I have painted to dry, and then paint a little more. It's lots of little bur...

My youngest achieves small-scale fame / http://www.rocknycliveandrecorded.com/

About ten years ago, there was an exhibit at the New York Historical Society called something like "Sewing in New York". A challa cover I had made in honor of my daughter's bat-mitzvah was included in the exhibit. One of the pieces in the exhibit was a workman's jacket from the late 1800's. It was made out of a floral damask denim. There were holes in the jacket that were beautifully and painstakingly darned and patched. Seeing that level of skill on a repair job  for such a lowly garment was somehow touching. Darning is not something I normally choose to do. My husband purchased a pair of black cotton shorts soon after we started going out. Four years later he was wearing those shorts when he asked me to marry him. For years afte,r he would hand me the shorts and ask me to darn them. I did, over and ove,r until the shorts were constructed out of an alarmingly high percentage of black sewing thread. Eventually, ( After about fifteen years, in case you think th...

Some kids come into the world with their personalities in flux. Those kids take a while to emerge into who they really are. Ella, is one of those kids who came into the world with her personality complete. A few months ago, Ella came up to me in synagogue and informed me that it was time for us to begin thinking about her tallit. While I was looking forward to working with Ella, it took until last week before we could sit down together. Ella's portion is Toledot ( Genesis 25:19- 28:9). Ella wanted to use two different verses of blessing given to Jacob. The first was " And  I will increase your progeny like the stars of the sky.". We decided to use that verse, on the corner pieces, each phrase of the verse on a different corner. So the corners will be blue, have stars and text. That was easy to figure out. Then we had to figure out the rest of the tallit. The easy part was choosing the fabric for the tallit. Ella loved a slubbed silk/hemp similar to a shantung. Ell...

Design It, Sew It, and Wear It: Clothes from Patterns You Make Yourself    Yesterday one of my kids picked up a book I had reserved at the library, it was Duane Bradley's Design It, Sew It, and Wear It: . I see, from looking at Amazon that a new edition was put out in 1993, but I got the 1979 edition. This is the cover from the 1993 edition. All in all, not a bad book for getting started making clothing sans pattern. On the minus side, the clothing is not fabulous, but rather utilitarian. Actually, that may not be a minus at all.  Not everyone wants to dress like a Wiccan.The book progresses from easy garments made only from rectangles to more complex garments with darts. the directions are good and easy to understand. I'm realizing that I sound a bit lukewarm  here, but I realize that it is mostly, because I wish I had Part 2 of this book, with garments a bit more complicated. With a bit of fishing at Amazon, you can get this book for very little, especial...